The Render Garage A9-XHDT Project Torana
A9-XHDT is a unique tribute to Peter Brock's legendary 1979 Bathurst Winning A9X Holden Torana, but with a Render Garage twist. We wanted to create a cool promotional car for the business and with an LX Torana Hatchback sitting in the shed we had the perfect canvas to come up with something really cool!
I’ve owned this car since I was 16 and over the years it’s had a few different looks, from the factory in 1976 it was Aquarius blue with a 253 and an aussie 4-Speed. It was pretty rough when I bought it though, it had a dodgy blue paint job and rust in all the usual places, but it was perfect for me to get my hands dirty learn about cars. With the help of my dad and friends I made through car forums like GMH-Torana, I managed to build a pretty cool car to cruise around in on my P plates.
A couple of years later, I bought the custom plates MRLXSS for it and decided it was time for a bit of freshen up. I gave it a new lick of paint, fitted the Convo Pros and at this time it was running a 290 cube stroked 253.
Once I was off my P’s, I started to build the engine that’s currently in it. One of my mates worked at Speed Works Engines in Ringwood and he built me the 355 that’s currently in there. Since then, the car hasn’t seen much action as it took a bit of a back seat to business and family life.
But that brings us to now, the body and paint were starting to show its age. It would have been great to give it a bare metal resto, but the budget just didn’t allow for that, so I needed to come up with something that would work with what I’ve got.
That’s where the A9 - XHDT idea was born!
I wanted it to look like a barn find of Brocky’s legendary ‘79 Bathurst A9X with a Render Garage twist. I trialed the idea on some renders to see how my logo would look as the primary sponsor and fine-tuned it until I was happy with the general look and feel.
From here I enlisted the help of superstar wrap designer Skepple to bring my concept to life in a way that only he can. He worked his magic to create a design with unbelievable detail and realism. Utilising his art, I then created the project renders to showcase how it would look once complete.
The car was starting to look a little tired and there were a few spots of rust around the car that I wanted to get tidied up, so I had my good friend Leigh Burke at Burke’s Bodyworks give it a bit of a freshen up in readiness for the wrap.
Best Digital Signs were then tasked with installing the wrap onto the car. It's a very complicated wrap with many colours and shapes that need to hit key bodylines, not to mention lining up the detail of the scratches and marks that cross over the elements.
Check out the video below to see the Renders go from concept to reality.
